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How-To Geek

We’ve already shown you how to celebrate Halloween by turning your friends into ghosts, now we’ll show you how to turn them into the hungry dead with a fun video how-to. Grab some Facebook photos and give it a shot!

Zombies have become an internet staple. How could we have gone so long without showing HTG readers how to do this? Grab your mouse or stylus, and get ready for some artsy fun, as you turn your friends and family into horrible monsters. Keep reading!

How to Make Photoshop Zombies: The Movie

This is probably one of our more complicated Photoshop how-tos. Follow along and stop anytime you’re satisfied with your result—some of the steps are added in for extra effects. Watch the video to get a good grasp of the technique, and read the tools and techniques below to see what was done with a little bit more explanation.

Techniques You’ll See in the Movie

We begin with creating adjustment layers, both Hue/Saturation and Levels. You can click the in your layers panel to create them.

Hue/Saturation: Use whichever settings look good to you. You’re focusing mostly on getting a good cadaverous skin tone.

Levels: Darken them up dramatically. This will become your shadows and gaunt in your eyes and cheek bones.

Lower opacity will show more of the eye. A fairly high number like 70% will show just enough to make it creepy!

Try setting your adjustment layers to different blending modes, as well. Here, we have it set as normal, the way we’ve used it throughout this how to.

“Multiply” gives some interesting results, and looks perfect, dark, and creepy. Do this only if you like it better than your “Normal” setting, but definitely give a few different settings a try!

Hopefully your Halloween photos will be overrun by swarms of zombies that would even scare George Romero! If you happen to create a zombie that you’re very impressed with, send it to us at ericgoodnight@howtogeek.com and we’ll share it with the other readers on the HTG Facebook page. Have fun with it, and have a happy Halloween!

Image Credits: Brunette Portuguese Beauty by Austin H. Kapfumvuti, available under Creative Commons. Cracks by Kayli Harden, available under Creative Commons, derivative image released under the same license.

Eric Z Goodnight is an Illustrator and Graphics Geek who hopes to make Photoshop more accessible to How-To Geek readers. When he’s not headbanging to heavy metal or geeking out over manga, he’s often off screen printing T-Shirts.